Helping America’s retired lab chimps find a haven
How do you handle the retirement of hundreds of chimps that were once used for medical experiments? That is the question facing the US government.
Experimenting on the animals was found to be “largely unnecessary” in a 2011 study by a committee from the government’s National Institutes of Health.
The institute accepted the committee’s findings and announced in November 2015 it was ending medical experiments on chimps.
Strict laws were already in place including the Chimp Act of 2000, which enshrined the right of the apes to be retired and enjoy lifetime care. This leaves the institute with an enormous task.
In March this year it had 504 chimps, of which 232 were already in federal sanctuaries, mainly at Chimp Haven in Louisiana. But it was left with another 272 to deal with, of which 177 had chronic health conditions including heart and kidney problems.
Some chimps are considered too fragile to move because of their physical condition and age, and scientists fear the stress could seriously harm their health. The average lifespan for chimpanzees in captivity is 31.7 years for males and 38.7 for females.
The journey to a sanctuary, which can take up to 15 hours, sometimes requires the chimps to be sedated before being loaded on to a climate-controlled lorry.
Some chimps that were moved did not fare well. Nine out of 13 animals sent to Chimp Haven from MD Anderson’s Keeling Centre for Comparative Medicine and Research in Bastrop, Texas, died within 18 months.
Some chimps are considered too fragile to move because of their condition, age and stress levels
The institute said the deaths were because of the chimps’ ages and that several had pre-existing conditions.
Another major problem is that chimps are social animals and breaking up their colonies carries a major risk, which is one of the factors taken into account before deciding whether to relocate them.
Although the institute has concluded that, subject to veterinary approval, all of its chimps should be moved to sanctuaries, some experts question the strategy.
“The simplest solution is to leave them in situ,” said Bill Hopkins, a neuroscientist at Georgia State University in Atlanta. “That might come across as anti-retirement, but it is not meant that way.
“Many are already living in stable communities. Some are living in housing that is as good or better than that where they would be moved to. All of the risks for the chimps are in moving them. There is no risk in leaving them where they are.
“That is not to say there are not some chimps who would be better served if they were retired to Chimp Haven, or another facility with better housing. But if they are to persist in this approach, they should prioritise moving the ones that are most in need of better housing and care.
“The federal sanctuary is not the only place. There are other facilities that have equally good housing for them.”
But Elizabeth Magner, programme manager with the New England Anti-Vivisection Society, disagreed.
“Sanctuaries have had a lot of success in moving hundreds of chimps,” Ms Magner said.
“There have been numerous cases where aged or sick chimpanzees in laboratories go on to thrive in a sanctuary, in many cases because they are removed from the sites they associate with the trauma of experimentation.
“Our view is that unless a chimpanzee is in the final symptomatic stages of life, he or she should be moved to a sanctuary. The benefits far outweigh the risk.”